Canada’s largest battery storage facility to be built in Stratford

By the end of this year, a portion of Stratford will be running, at least partially, on battery power.

Saturn Power has partnered with Festival Hydro to build the largest batter storage facility in Canada, marking the first steps towards creating a micro-grid in Stratford.

Planned for the Wright Business Park, the battery storage facility will be constructed on an acre of land next to the existing Festival Hydro transformer station. Using Powin Energy’s Stack140 energy storage system, the facility will house four lithium ion battery cell arrays – two with a capacity of two Megawatts, and two with a capacity of 2.4 Megawatts.

Together, the battery cell arrays will provide a storage capacity of 8.8 Megawatts, which translates to 40.8 Megawatt hours of available energy – enough to supply more than 10,000 homes with electricity for an hour.

“What this does is it allows us to take energy off the grid at non-peak times – so, for example it can charge up during the night as you would with your cellphone. Then, you now have the energy stored to be able to put it back on the grid when you need it for peak reduction,” said Ysni Semsedini, CEO of Festival Hydro.

“What we’re hoping to work towards, in time, is a micro-grid solution to look at, can we put in solar there as well and have a true micro-grid operating in the heart of our industrial park?” Semsedini said. “It would be something very unique to Stratford.”

Construction of the battery storage facility is expected to be complete by the end of August, after which the battery cell arrays will be transported to the building and installed. Semsedini expects the storage facility to be up and running by October or November.